


Six Candles and Seven Thousand Miles

by Shearmouth



Series: Whumptober 2019 [7]
Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, whumptober2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-12-13 23:28:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21005924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shearmouth/pseuds/Shearmouth
Summary: Whumptober Day 7– Isolation"Hey, Hawkeye, have you seen B.J.?"





	Six Candles and Seven Thousand Miles

Someone was calling his name.

Hawkeye glanced up from the _Crabapple Cove Times_– mail call days were the goddamn _best– _and looked up to find Radar hurrying toward him, waving an arm.

“Radar, if you keep waving like that, your thumb will pop off and start orbiting around Frank,” Hawkeye warned. He was a little peeved at the interruption. The day before had seen nonstop surgery for the better part of eighteen hours. This was the first time Hawkeye’s bootsoles had seen the sunlight in over a day, an occasion made all the sweeter with the arrival of the mail this morning. But the look of honest concern on Radar’s face as he approached had him sitting a little straighter.

“What is it, Radar?” Hawkeye asked, as the corporal came to a stop before him, panting slightly. “More wounded?” _Please, God, no. _

“No, not that,” Radar said, shifting his weight nervously. “Have you seen B.J? The Colonel wants to talk to him. He’s putting you both on leave for the weekend.” 

“I haven’t seen him since the mail arrived– wait, what?,” Hawkeye replied. “Leave? Really?”

“Neither of you have had any for over a month, and with all these wounded lately, the Colonel’s worried about you,” Radar said. “He wanted to send you out tonight. There shouldn’t be any more casualties for at least the weekend.”

Excitement drove the fatigue from Hawkeye’s limbs, and he sprang up gleefully. “That’s fantastic, Radar! I’ll go tell him.”

“You gotta let the Colonel know by sixteen-hundred,” Radar said. “Better hurry.”

Hawkeye planted a kiss on Radar’s hat and ran off to find B.J.

It proved to be a more difficult task than he’d anticipated. The Swamp was empty, as was post-op. Hawkeye asked around the mess tent, and even stopped in at Father Mulcahy’s to see if Beej had suddenly sprouted an interest in the sacrament. It seemed that no one had seen Hawkeye’s tentmate in hours.

They were going to run out of time. Hawkeye wracked his brain. He’d gotten to know B.J. quite well by this point. It was rare for his friend to baffle him like this.

There was only one place he hadn’t checked yet. Hawkeye frowned. Why would he be there?

Hawkeye trotted over to the nearest M.P. and asked to borrow their binoculars. When he looked up toward the helipad, it took him a moment to locate the spot. But when he did, he couldn’t miss the olive-drab blur sitting there.

He thanked the M.P., and started climbing.

B.J. rarely crept off to his perch by the helipad. When he needed solitude, he retreated there. Hawkeye had only been up a few times, and he had to admit that B.J. had picked a nice spot. It was a little indent in the hillside, sheltered by brush and out of view but from a few places in camp. It offered a panorama of the whole unit, and the dry fields and crooked hills beyond. When Hawkeye had asked why he came here, B.J. had shrugged and said he liked being up high. Made the war seem less real, less in your face.

It had been a rough go at surgery, sure, but Hawkeye couldn’t fathom what had driven B.J. up this time. As far as he knew, B.J. hadn’t lost any patients. He’d grown accustomed a long time ago to the brutality of their posts. Worry for his friend twisted in Hawkeye’s chest, and he climbed a little more quickly.

He was panting by the time he reached the helipad. The sun was sliding lower in the sky. They would have to hurry if they wanted to make leave.

Hawkeye found the subtle cleft in the brush that marked the entrance. He walked through carefully, but he deliberately let his feet scrape through the rocks. He didn’t want to startle B.J.

He came around the bend to the indent and slowed to a stop. “Beej?”

B.J. was sitting with his back against the hillside, knees pulled to his chest and arms circling his shins. His chin rested on his kneecaps. He didn’t turn his head when he replied, “Hey, Hawk.”

Hawkeye swallowed. He knew that voice. That was B.J.’s I’ve-had-enough voice. He’d only heard it a few times, when things had gotten really bad. With the source still unknown, it scared Hawkeye to hear it now.

“Hey,” Hawkeye said. He approached slowly, casually, the way he’d seen Radar do with frightened animals. He sat carefully next to B.J., close enough that if he wanted to, B.J. could lean over and rest his shoulder against Hawkeye’s. “Everyone’s been looking for you. Potter wants to send you and me to Tokyo for the weekend. Leaving tonight.”

B.J. still didn’t look over. “You go ahead.”

Honest alarm flared in Hawkeye’s gut. B.J. never passed up a chance for leave. He shifted a little bit closer to his friend.

“You want to tell me what’s going on?” he asked gently.

“It’s fine, Hawk,” B.J. replied. He sniffed, an wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “I just don’t feel like Tokyo right now. You go ahead without me. Don’t wait up.”

Okay. So it was going to be like that, then.

“See, here’s the thing,” Hawkeye drawled. “It’s no fun without you. Who else am I going to get banned from the bar with? Who else will continue our experiment of how much sake the human body can absorb before it combusts?” Hawkeye leaned back against the hillside. The rock was warm on his shoulder blades. “Nah, Beej. I’ll be just as happy holding down the Swamp with you.”

“You’re full of shit,” B.J. said. “You’ve gone alone plenty of times.”

_Before you got here, _Hawkeye thought. _It’s different now. _

“B.J.,” Hawkeye said, dropping the casual and going straight for midnight confessions. “I’m not leaving you here. I won’t ask you to tell me what’s wrong. But I’m not gonna let you mope like this by yourself. I wouldn’t be able to have a good time anyway. Not when I know something’s going on with you.”

B.J. was silent. Then a long, shuddering breath went out of him, and he dropped his forehead to his knees. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a letter and a photograph. He handed them both to Hawkeye without looking.

Hawkeye frowned in confusion. Then he looked at the photo– a little girl about to blow out six candles on a birthday cake–and the pieces fell into place.

Pain for his friend swelled below Hawkeye’s ribs. “Oh, Beej…”

“It was her birthday, Hawkeye,” B.J. said, and even muffled Hawkeye could hear the tears rising in his voice. “She just turned six. And I wasn’t– I wasn’t even there to wish her– a happy–“ B.J.’s shoulders started shaking, and a broken sob escaped him. He clenched into a tighter ball, as if he was trying to make himself disappear.

As if he was trying to will himself back home, to his family.

Hawkeye shifted so they were hip to hip and put his arm around B.J. He ran his hand soothingly up and down his back as B.J. cried. He had only ever seen him truly break down here, in this place, and for that reason it had become as sacred to Hawkeye as it was to B.J. Here the hills would keep their secrets and swallow their pain until it was bearable.

“I know, Beej,” Hawkeye murmured. “I know. I’m so sorry.”

B.J unfolded and turned into Hawkeye. Hawkeye pulled him in, and B.J.’s head fell against the front of Hawkeye’s shoulder.

“She’s growing up without me,” B.J. whimpered. “She’s growing up without me, Hawk. I’m not there. I’m supposed to be there.”

Hawkeye wrapped his arms tightly around B.J.’s back and brought one hand up to cradle the back of his head. For them touch had always come easy. Hawkeye had enjoyed plenty of flings with both sexes in the past, but for him his bond with B.J. was something different than that. It was what he imagined having a brother would feel like– like two people who had known each other their whole lives, and who had each other’s backs, always. Even he and Trapper had never bared their souls to one another the way he and B.J. seemed to do so easily. And so no part of him was uncomfortable or embarrassed by the way he was holding B.J. against him and whispering to him soothingly, or the way that B.J.’s tears were steadily soaking the front of his shirt. All he felt was a warmth, and a deep secondhand sadness.

“I’m so sorry, B.J.,” he said again.

B.J. pulled back slightly, wiping his eyes, but they kept spilling over. “I just– Hawk, how is she even going to remember me? I’ve been gone for so long and she’s growing up so fast and I–“ B.J. dropped his face into one hand, leaving the other clamped around Hawkeye’s bicep. 

“Hey, hey,” Hawkeye said. He pulled B.J.’s hands away from his face so he could look him in the eyes. “You can’t think like that, Beej. You can’t. You’re her father. She could never forget you, and she won’t. And pretty soon you’re gonna go home and tell her happy birthday in person.” Hawkeye brushed his thumb over B.J.’s cheek.

B.J. inhaled shakily. “But the war–“

“The war will end,” Hawkeye said firmly. “It has to. And it will. And I’ll go home to my dad in Maine and you’ll go home to your wife and little girl and we can forget all of this. Put it behind us, forever. You have to believe that, B.J. You have to keep holding on to that.”

B.J. nodded. He seemed to be calming down, but his eyes were red and tears still crept down his cheeks. “I miss them so much, Hawk. So much. I feel so lonely out here sometimes.”

“I know,” Hawkeye said. “I know. It all gets to us sometimes. And when it gets to you, you have to remember that you’re not alone. Everybody here feels the same way you do.” Hawkeye tilted his head thoughtfully. “Well, not Frank. But every _human _here wants to go home too. You gotta remember that. If you need alone time, take it, I get it. But don’t isolate yourself like this. Not for too long. If the snipers don’t get you, your head will. Talk to Sidney. Talk to _me. _You’re not alone in this, Beej.”

B.J. looked up at Hawkeye, and he looked so young and scared and broken-open that Hawkeye remembered how old they both were beyond their years, burdened with the horrors of war. And the fear of what may come, and not come, grew heavy and cold in Hawkeye’s soul. 

And then B.J. cracked a weak grin. “Leave, you said?”

Hawkeye grinned back. “I did indeed. We gotta go tell Potter, though. Like, now.”

“Right, okay,” B.J. said. He rose, wiping his eyes with a soft groan, and blew out a harsh breath. “Okay.”

“You and me,” Hawkeye said, throwing an arm around B.J.’s shoulders as they started making their way down the hillside, “are going to get drunk and make merry and forget the trials and tribulations of an army doctor for a few brief, precious days. But before all that–“ B.J. glanced over curiously at Hawkeye as he stopped talking.

“Before all that, you’re going to call Erin and wish her happy birthday.”

B.J. frowned in confusion. “Hawk, the phone won’t go through that far, hasn’t for weeks–” “Radar has a new friend down at the eight-oh-sixty-third,” Hawkeye said. “Traded half our supply of spam for patching through Transpacific calls for the next month and a half.” Hawkeye grinned. “Overheard him telling Potter this morning.”

Pure joy glowed in B.J.’s eyes as a massive smile split his face. “Jesus, Hawk, why didn’t you tell me that earlier! Let’s go!” B.J. took off running down the hill, beckoning. “Come on, Erin’s been wanting to say hi to Uncle Hawkeye since Christmas!”

Hawkeye beamed. Yes, of course. Not alone. Neither of them.

He laughed, the cold in his soul fading, and followed.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
